Less choice, higher costs for turkeys this year due to COVID-19, rising feed costs, supply chain

With more than two weeks to go until Christmas, producers and processors of turkeys in Canada are encouraging people to start thinking about holiday dinner plans now amid a reduced supply of products at some stores.

“If you want exactly what you want, probably better to find it sooner than later and make sure you own one,” Brian Ricker, the owner of Brian Ricker Farms and the chair of Turkey Farmers of Ontario, told CityNews on Wednesday.

“I always buy a frozen turkey. They taste just the same as fresh turkeys to me. If you want a fresh turkey, that’s where it gets a little riskier.”

The past two years throughout the course of the pandemic have hit farmers like Ricker and his business in Dunnville, Ont.

“When we started pandemic in 2020, we were actually well [oversupplied] with bagged birds and boneless, skinless breast meat where both the storage stocks were pretty high in turkey. And so when the pandemic hit, the processors really, really begged us to lower production because people just weren’t buying deli meat (at delis and at restaurants),” Ricker said.

However, through the course of the pandemic, he said a “strange thing” happened: an uptick in sales and even panic buying in the earlier months.

“Since people couldn’t go out and eat they actually bought more whole turkeys than we anticipated in 2020 and in 2021. We did increase production to try and match supply with demand, but it’s kind of a guess,” Ricker explained while describing the challenges in scaling up and down production.

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“You have to allocate about nine months before you need the birds because it takes about three months to grow a turkey, and so then you have to order the birds, get them from the hatcheries, and hatcheries have to have them from breeder stock.”

During past festive events in the past two years, he said demand for smaller turkeys (e.g. in the five-to-seven- and seven-to-nine-kilogram classes) shot up while larger turkeys were left over.

Despite the better-than-expected sales, Ricker and others in the industry have been affected by other factors impacting operations and costs.

With COVID-19 protocols, he said it has resulted in labour shortages (both when someone needs to stay home due to experiencing symptoms and in the longer term). When it comes to droughts seen in the prairies, that effect on crops and other contributing factors sent feed costs soaring.

“Every animal protein that eats corn, and soybeans, and wheat, our costs have all gone up and so, of course, we have to pass those through to the consumer unfortunately and that is going to raise the price of food,” Ricker said.

Jean-Michel Laurin, president and CEO of the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council, said the country’s turkey processors and producers have been caught up in global supply chain issues. However, with the higher-than-expected demand for turkeys in 2020, he’s “cautiously optimistic” for this year.

“We’ve dealt with a lot of disruption throughout the year with regards to demand, it seemed only a few weeks ago we were going to get rid of a lot of the restrictions we’ve been faced and now with this variant coming up, we’re seeing people put their guard up a little bit more again,” Laurin said.

In terms of supply issues at stores, he said he’s heard of isolated shortages at certain stores in different communities.

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Laurin said with turkey farmers having to pay more to bring their products to market, there will likely be costs passed on. But when it comes to retailers, he said it remains to be seen if they will pass along those costs. Laurin added he’s aware of select companies pricing turkeys more aggressively in order to lure shoppers into grocery stores.

CityNews visited three grocery stores in Toronto’s east end to check out the supply of turkeys in freezers and reached out to each store’s head office to ask about the demand by customers. One store location had just seven whole birds in the freezer while the other stores had freezers that were a third to half full.

A spokesperson for Freshco told CityNews in a statement the company’s stores currently have a “great supply” of turkeys and have the ability to restock as needed.

Meanwhile, Ricker — who produces around 50,000 turkeys a year with a third just for Christmas day alone — said he has a barn full of birds that could be used for the holidays if the processor has the capacity. If not, he said the turkeys will be processed in January for Easter or for general usage outside of festive seasons — touting the benefits of turkeys for everyday cooking.

He preached patience and understanding heading into the holidays.

“The turkey experience is a good family day experience, and that’s what really brings us through the festive times,” Ricker said.

“We believe that there will be enough turkey for people, it’s just they might have to go to a second store location and of course there are lots of turkey rolls, turkey roasts and turkey parts that are also available as people have smaller get-togethers.”